


giving middle-aged women heart attacks for fun and for profit

by violetinfidel



Series: drabbles [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: and hes like sure thing! dont worry ill be a perfect little angel!, and then as soon as he isnt under round-the-clock imprisonment, he pulls shit like this, hes brought to hyrule and warned that he needs to be on his best behavior, shadow really doesnt know when to quit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 04:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14783565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetinfidel/pseuds/violetinfidel





	giving middle-aged women heart attacks for fun and for profit

Shadow knows that currently he is in no position to be screwing around with castle staff.

He also knows that the castle staff are in no position to stop him.

He’s still new to Hyrule; it’s been a couple of months, and he’s a little familiar with it now, and they’re a little familiar with him. But not familiar enough to feel entirely comfortable around him. They still think he’s too volatile to approach, and to some degree they’re right- he’s known to snap, even over little things, though it’s mostly at the Links. But that’s with good reason, of course. There’s a lot of bad blood between them.

The little spats he and the other citizens get into? That’s all in good fun. Very horribly misunderstood good fun, but it’s fun all the same, and fun’s what Shadow’s all about. And sure, their definition of  _fun_  doesn’t quite align with his, but he doesn’t let such a minor detail as that ruin his good times.

Presently he’s waiting in the shadows of the kitchen for some poor unfortunate cook to come along. It’s early in the morning, too early for his personal guard to be checking in on him, and too early for anywhere to be particularly crowded. The city’s slowly waking up, though, and so is the castle, and the cooks will be along soon, to start preparing breakfast, and that’s exactly what he’s waiting for.

He gets a little impatient- he can’t help it, he’s sitting in a silent room in a silent castle with no one else around- so in the meantime he occupies himself with moving things around in the kitchens, putting pots where the cups should be and scattering the silverware across the counters and replacing all the charcoal in the ovens with rocks. All in good fun, he thinks cheerfully as he rigs a very elaborate trap in one of the bread ovens, designed to char to a crisp anything that gets put in it. He’s nearly done with it when he hears footsteps approaching, and ruefully he melts back into the darkness, and promises to himself that he’ll finish it later, for the lunch hour.

There’s only one chef that comes in. He recognizes her, vaguely, as the head of the kitchens, though he can’t recall her name, and thinks that even if he won’t be able to get a crowd, she’s certainly a good one to go for. 

For maximum effect, he waits until she’s got some fires going in the ovens; it’ll exaggerate the shadows, and it gives him more to work with, which is what he needs.

And then, when she’s got her back turned on where he is, he reaches for the shadows and, to his great pleasure, finds that they are wholly responsive to his will. He bends them into forms that he feels will work absolute wonders; tall, looming figures, silhouettes of monsters lurking around the corners, big blurry things with wicked teeth and jagged claws and malice in their eyes.

He sits, grinning, in the darkness, waiting. And the moment’s a precious, priceless thing. She turns, with an armful of bowls and pots and pans, and her eyes lock onto the shifting murky shapes on the walls and they all go clattering to the ground as she trips over herself trying back away. She steps on a fallen ladle and slips, scrambles backwards, hauls herself back to her feet and then books it out, screaming something incomprehensible about monsters, and Shadow can’t remember the last time he’s had this much fun.

It doesn’t last very long, though. He does his best to cover his tracks, erases the shapes he’s made on the walls and extinguishes the fires and returns the fallen equipment to where they all came from, and he goes back to his room and pretends to sleep, like he’s been there the whole time. He fools no one, of course; the four Links storm in looking very upset, while he feigns a deep slumber, and when Blue shakes him awake and demands that he confess his wrongdoing, he only gives an innocent smile and asks what they could possibly be referring to. He’s just been a perfect little angel, as always.

“It is very obvious that you are guilty, Shadow.”

“Who, me?” He looks around, as if searching for another person they might be speaking to. “Guilty of what?”

None of them look very amused.

“Arcy,” Red says, with a bitter and obviously fake smile (ah, Shadow thinks, that was her name), “Ran out of the kitchens scared half out of her mind. Babbling something about shadows. I wonder who  _that_ could be.”

“Clearly she’s just seeing things.”

“Yeah, seeing things  _you_  made.”

“Well, that’s still seeing things, isn’t it? They weren’t  _real.”_

“Shadow.”

“I was only having fun!”

“Is that so?”

He gets a month’s worth of probation for his  _fun_. (He ignores this futile measure, and continues to scare the shit out of anyone unfortunate enough to catch his eye.)


End file.
